


More Things in Heaven and Earth

by Unsentimentalf



Category: Sherlock TV
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-18
Updated: 2012-01-28
Packaged: 2017-10-29 18:30:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/322846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"What's the last thing you remember?"<br/>"Impact."</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Metaphysics with an Angel

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Есть многое на небе и земле](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3681417) by [Alves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alves/pseuds/Alves)



"I don't accept this reality."

The thing in front of him looked patronisingly down its nose. "Most people don't, to start with. However much they've gone to church, read about it, they don't believe that it will really happen like this."

Sherlock shook his head, annoyed. "I'm not talking about ill considered and inconsistent theology. The survival of personality past the death of the brain is impossible. I refuse to engage in a fiction."

"What's the last thing you remember?" The creature's wings extended slightly, tucked back again behind his body. Sherlock took another look around. Just him and the...angel in a haze of white mist, and the huge gates suspended in front of them. An entirely conventional and uninspired rendition of the afterlife.

"Impact."

The angel looked rather impressed. "Most people don't remember that. The trauma blocks it. What was it like?"

"Like hitting a hard surface at high speed. I lost consciousness within a millisecond. I would have been killed almost instantaneously." He glanced around again. "Clearly that didn't happen."

"Surely death was the only possible outcome? And this is the afterlife."

"Thoughts and memories are encoded in the billions of neuron links within the central nervous system. Damage or destroy the brain and they are lost." Sherlock glanced down. He was wearing the clothes that he'd jumped in. Flecks of blood from Moriarty's final move were splattered in a fine pattern across his coat. As far as he could tell he was uninjured. He had no plausible theories whatsoever. Needed more data.

The angel. Human except for the folded white feathered wings extending high over its head and to within six inches of the ground. It was wearing a white robe of what was clearly fine linen from the way it hung, no indication of the method of bleaching used. Features were masculine, a mix of north african and caucasian. No trace of facial hair, no blemishes. No deodorant. No scent of any kind. Hair and nails perfectly even length, no flecks.

The feathers looked natural, though that didn't mean much. "Can you extend those wings?" he demanded.

They spread out to a fifteen foot span with an audible rustle and he felt the warm air around him move.

"No," Sherlock said scornfully. "They'd have to be connected to the upper musculoskeletal system and weigh at least twenty kilos, probably far more. You didn't flex any of the relevant muscle groups. Didn't anyone with a basic knowledge of anatomy get in on this charade?"

The angel laughed. "Certain physical laws are suspended here."

"How does that work, precisely?"

The creature looked at him, unsmiling. "There is an explanation that fits in entirely with your rational world view. You are very unlikely to work it out and it is not relevant to the true meaning of what is happening to you. You would do best to accept that what you see and hear here is real."

"This is not real." Sherlock dug his nails into his wrist, noting the pain sharp, the marks red and fading fast as he would expect. He had finally scraped up a hypothesis. "The damage from impact is causing one final split second hallucination before the disruption to nerves and brain tissue is severe enough to cause death."

Sherlock was thoroughly unimpressed by the nature of this hallucination, but Judeo-Christian stereotypes were powerful subconscious cues. He really would have preferred not to waste his final semi-conscious moment arguing metaphysics with a shoddily constructed angel. John would think it funny. John; a spasm of acute mental distress and he lost patience with this farce.

"There had to be a limit to the amount of subjective time that can be encompassed in a millisecond length brain event. I will die very soon. I would much prefer to do so without angels." He turned his back on the golden gates and the construct, gazed out into the white mist, waited.

It wasn't easy just to wait. Over and over his mind replayed the scene on top of the building. If he'd been faster he could have seized the gun. Not just faster-if he'd understood the lengths Moriarty had been prepared to go to in order to win. That the conflict with him was the only thing keeping the man alive. The clues had all been there. Moriarty had even spelled it out to him, but Sherlock had still been thinking about afterwards, after he'd won. And so he'd lost.

He glanced down at his watch. The seconds ticked by as normal. He'd been standing here for at least twenty five minutes.

Try an experiment. Divide a seven digit number-6456266- by a three digit one-814. He worked at it methodically, came to an answer. He took out his phone, noting automatically that there was no signal and no messages, and pulled up the calculator to check.

There was no possible way that a split second brainstate could complete that level of calculation, even if subjective time was massively extended. Reluctantly he shelved that hypothesis, turned back to the patient angel. It appeared that unlike Jim Moriarty he was somehow staying alive. For now.


	2. Flames, Feathers and Fairytales

"I suppose that I go through those." Sherlock gestured curtly at the ludicrous gilt constructions. The appeared to be nothing behind them but more whiteness.

The angel shook dark curls, eyebrows arched in mock surprise. "Do you know any basic Christian theology at all?"

"Deleted it. There are far more fairytales in the world than can sensibly be remembered." He'd remembered Hansel and Gretel though. Two small children stolen and poisoned in order to set him up. Moriarty had won that round, without question.

Grimm's fairy tales. Which had remained when other childish fantasies were discarded because he remembered his brother reading them to him, the steady, approving intonation of every righteous punishment inflicted on the wicked. For Mycroft what mattered was not that the children escaped but that the witch was burned.

Not a coincidence, Moriarty's choice of fairytale. Moriarty knew his childhood, precisely, thanks to Mycroft. Sherlock had never got past the first few smokescreens around Jim's identity. For the first time Sherlock felt the stir of profound gut-wrenching doubt. Had Jim Moriarty simply been better than him, every step of the way?

"Try it," the angel suggested. Since the alternative seemed to be to stand in this nothingness forever, Sherlock took a step towards the gates.

The angel moved, fast, was in his way, grown to twice its height, a sword (15 century bastard sword, most likely Germanic, scaled up in proportion to its wielder) raised and flaming along its length (the blue colour characteristic of butane, no obvious mechanism for gas delivery). Sherlock stepped back again rapidly and the angel returned to human proportion, sword vanishing.

"Nice trick." There had to be some basic principles behind what was going on. Not the dull made-up theological ones- clearly there was some sort of meaningless task that he was supposed to complete before he "moved on"- but proper physical ones. He needed more data. Much more data.

He tried walking away. After a few feet the stone under his feet ended in a cliff edge. Sherlock circled the limits of the space, stopping and backing up when the angel took on his martial aspect. He crouched to examine the stone, found it to be granite very similar to the outcrops of stone that he that he'd stood on in Dartmoor. To the naked eye there was no variance in the composition. There were no cracks or indentations.

The mist was odourless and around 16 degrees C. Without equipment he couldn't determine its composition but he suspected that he would identify it if he had the opportunity to run tests. Granite, butane and linen; this world was composed of real matter. It was the manipulation that seemed impossible. That and his presence.

Reaching one firm conclusion at least improved Sherlock's mood. Time to re-engage with the angel; there was nothing else to do here.

"If this is supposed to be the afterlife then where is everyone else?"

"Individual closed systems, for the moment."

Closed system. Not a theological term. Environmental? Biological? Engineering?

"There must be a lot of you."

"As many as required."

He tucked that away for future consideration. He was briefly tempted to ask what happened next but he knew the angel was waiting for that. He wasn't playing that game until he had to.

"May I have a feather, please?"

The angel attempted not to look startled. It extended one wing. "Take one." It clearly wasn't designed to tend to its own plumage; preening would require awkward twisting.

Up close the wing looked entirely similar to the little he knew of birds. Functional looking flight feathers on the familiar variant on upper limb bone structure, which made no sense anatomically because the creature had its full quota of upper limbs already.

The feather, plucked from the longest of the flight array, was swan's wing white and a good 15 inches long but otherwise unexceptional. When Sherlock broke the spine it hung as limp as he would have expected and when he twisted it enough to finally wrench it apart the broken edges of the hollow shaft were jagged and fibrous.

He held up the mangled object for its former owner's disconcerted inspection. "Real feathers, fake angels and remarkable special effects. Plus the whole not being dead thing. This is starting to get interesting."

Sherlock's initial disorientation had lifted. He was certain that the supernatural angle was a fraud, as supernatural explanations always were. He didn't know how he'd survived the fall but he had done. Had it been obvious enough to trigger Moriarty's gunmen? If his uncalled-for rescue had murdered his friends he would see every one of the men, women and angels behind this charade despatched each to their own personal hell.


	3. Threadbare Theology

There was nothing else to be learned from the tiny piece of ground on which Sherlock and the faux angel stood. There were only the golden gates, and he couldn't approach them without risking getting bisected by an implausibly flaming sword. He briefly considered calling the creature's bluff, decided to try less risky strategies first. Like talking.

"You clearly don't expect me to rush the gates, and this environment seems entirely static, so you must be waiting for me to say something, probably to ask you questions. But rational enquiries into the nature of this experience so far have made you mildly uncomfortable, so you're looking for something else. Confusion, maybe fear? Some reaction that you can use to bolster your authority and make me willing to accept whatever happens next."

He smiled coldly at the winged being. "That's not going to happen. Why don't you just skip the psychological strong-arm stuff and just tell me whatever it is that you want me to know?"

The slight flare of the wings outwards, the rustle of the feathers as they were pulled back into place might well signify anxiety or annoyance. The angel had done it several times now.

"Very well, Sherlock Holmes. You are dead. These are the gates to Heaven, through which you can pass only if I judge you worthy. If not you will be cast down into Hell for all eternity. Clear?"

It was a very good liar. Sherlock couldn't detect any visible signs of dissembling; to all outward appearances it seemed to believe what it was saying.

Sherlock hadn't deleted every part of his religious education. "Is that it? What happened to Purgatory? The dead awaiting Judgement Day? Don't I get to stand before God? Your theology seems remarkably threadbare, angel. Do you even know what category of angel you're meant to be? Do you have a name?"

The feathers shook again. "This is all that is necessary."

"Necessary for what?"

"Necessary to ensure that the correct result is obtained."

"What constitutes a correct result?" Sherlock took a step forward but the sword didn't appear. The creature was distracted.

"That good is rewarded and evil punished, of course."

"Naturally," Sherlock said sarcastically. "Good and evil. Right and wrong. Black and white. No room for subjectivity there. Tell me, do you try this on everyone who dies?"

"Everyone."

"Good. I trust Jim Moriarty found a way to rip your little tableau to shreds."

The wings shivered.

"Of course I'm not dead, and the whole thing is a fraud. But get on with it. Judge me. Everyone else has."

The angel drew itself upright, extended its wings to their full span. It looked impressive, if you didn't know that it was impossible and therefore fake.

"I shall be brief, for there is little that needs to be said. You disliked humanity, in general and particular. You rejected those who nurtured you and took pleasure in tormenting those who reached out to you. You used the people around you without a thought to their wants and needs. The world of sorrows and misery was your playground and ther ones who loved you were merely resources for exploitation."

It paused, continued. "Set against that, the single glowing example of your final sacrifice is not enough."

Was that it? The angel seemed to be waiting for his response. Sherlock hadn't intended to be drawn into defending himself, but really, this was stupid.

"How many lives did my work save, angel? No mention of them?"

"Not relevant. You didn't care about them."

"So it's all about motives? That's a meaningless measure of a life. Any fool who never has an original thought in his life, never achieves anything, never betters the lot of his fellow man in any respect can 'care'. The world was a safer place because of me. The guilty were punished, the innocent released. I was on," he raised an eyebrow at the thing, wondering if the phrase's resonance would mean anything to it, "the side of the angels."

"How many people died because you played games with Jim Moriarty?"

Sherlock's mind immediately turned to John. And Lestrade, and Mrs Hudson. Had they been killed? Surely the angel, whatever it was, would know.

"Are they dead?"

The angel shook his head. "We are still at the moment of your death. Their fate still lies in the future."

Again it seemed sincere, though the statement was nonsense. He was alive and time had passed while he had been on this piece of rock. John was dead, or not dead, already. And this was a pointless debate. What did he care what the thing said? The outcome had been fixed from the start.

"Enough of this. You have ceased to be interesting, and I've failed to meet your completely inane criteria for worthiness. We might as well get on with the next bit."

The angel took a breath, obviously about to make some proclamation, then shrugged, annoyed, and gestured abruptly. Ground, angel, gates and mist disappeared and Sherlock was in freefall for the second time that day. His eyes had closed in reflex; he opened them a slit against the cold air streaming upwards around him. A blink was all he needed; the image below was instantly recognisable. The sunlit blue river wound between miles of white and grey buildings, the parks were sharp with the green of early Spring, the late afternoon light reflected up from the Dome, flashed off the white of the Millennium wheel. He was falling face down towards Central London, from a height of around five thousand feet.


	4. Why This is Hell

The wind ripped through Sherlock's coat which tore backwards at his body as he fell, keeping him tumbling erratically from side to side. He'd fallen once, deliberately, to his death; now he was falling without explanation and without purpose. Thirty seconds, the calculator in his mind told him. Twenty nine. Twenty eight. Twenty seven.

All fraud. The angel, the glimpse of Heaven's gates and now this descent. Twenty four. Twenty three. He would not hit Baker Street, now centred neatly below his chaotic fall, at approximately 125 miles an hour and die. Nineteen. Eighteen. Hell, the angel had promised. Not oblivion. Fifteen. Fourteen. The noise of the air around him was deafening. London was spread out huge and familiar underneath him. Eleven. Ten. Impossible to drop a passive human body from 5,000 feet accurately onto a small target yet there was the circle of Regent's Park and the green of Hyde Park and between them, below him, Baker Street and home. Eight. Seven. Six. He refused to close his eyes, not when he might spot how the trickery was done. Three. Two. The grey roof slates of 221B were coming at him at over a hundred miles an hour, and he hit them with his eyes open and his face twisted in a snarl of defiance.

He bounced, hit the roof again and rolled off the guttering and forty feet down to slam into the street below. Lay still for a full minute while his body told him with what seemed like every pain receptor available that he was still conscious.

With a huge effort of will Sherlock pushed the pain aside. He was alive. Therefore the fall had been at least in part illusory. Therefore his injuries could not be assumed to be grave. He tried moving his limbs, found that he could do so. Nothing was broken. There was no indication of internal injuries. His coat and trousers were torn, there was a long bleeding gash in one leg, numerous bruises and his hands were badly grazed and jarred where he'd extended them instinctively; he'd sprained a wrist. If he'd encountered a man similarly injured he would have confidently deduced a fall of twelve to fifteen feet and a fortunate landing.

He pulled himself painfully to his feet, looked around. He'd already registered the silence. Near silence; there were sparrows squabbling in the nearest tree, and the light wind pushed the new leaves around. But the street was empty of people and the traffic noise was absent.

Sherlock glanced upwards. The light was starting to fade but the sky was still an unblemished blue. No contrails. He knew then, without any doubt whatsoever, that he was alone.

The flat was as he'd left it. Sherlock found John's medical supplies, was carefully applying butterfly tape when heard the key in the front door. He stilled, listening. That was John's tread on the stairs and Sherlock let out a breath of relief that he hadn't been conscious of holding, but halfway up the footsteps stopped and when he yanked the door open there was no-one there.

 

Lestrade's kid was limping again. Sherlock ran his fingers over the tiny hoof, feeling the heat from infection. Slaughter, wait, or try his new strain of antibiotics? The kid was female so potentially useful; he'd take it back to the flat, and see what he could do. Lestrade was butting at him, wanting her offspring back. He put the small animal down again temporarily, knelt down to milk the nanny goat.

The garden was still green despite the goats' depredations; no need yet to find another with high walls and to move the generator and wires that kept the increasingly rare packs of dogs at bay. From the end of his chain Jim glared at him with yellow eyes, curved horns ready.

Back in Baker Street Sherlock unloaded kid and milk from the back of the van. He'd put the animal in the kitchen, with Mrs Hudson's ghost for company. As he glanced down the street he could see John about fifty yards down the pavement, walking swiftly away.

Sherlock had spent most of the first year investigating the ghosts. He'd set up generators to run CCTV, he'd devised elaborate traps and messages, but in the end he'd had to accept that they were no more than images and sounds from times past, always on their way somewhere, never speaking and completely oblivious to the world in which Sherlock found himself. He saw John and Mrs Hudson most, of course, since they lived alongside him in 221B, but every few weeks DI Lestrade would visit Baker Street. His ghosts never stayed to face him and he'd come to ignore them, at least outwardly. He hasn't once considered moving out.

Other than Sherlock's three ghosts and the total disappearance of all other humans, hell was identical in every respect that he could test for to the world that he had supposedly left. He hated it with an intensity that he could hardly bear to acknowledge to himself. His days were mostly taken up with the monotonous drudgery of keeping himself and his dependants alive. Sherlock still wasn't sure if he could die, though he could and did get injured. The goats and lab animals were all too mortal and he needed them.

Today would start off like all the others. Milk goats. Refuel generators. Eat. Barts. Feed the lab animals. Check the experiments in process. After that- he felt a small frisson of rare pleasure- he would have the rest of the day for his work. He'd been working for months on synthesising psychoactive drugs and he'd prepared a dosage of his latest creation that ought to give him around twelve hours of escape. What he saw under the influence of the drugs wasn't real, but he was no longer sure what real was anyway. His hallucinations at least talked to him which was more than his ghosts had ever done.

The angel had been right; he'd disliked humanity, but life without it was tedious in the extreme. No motives, no mysteries. No crimes or puzzles. No-one to outwit. No-one to talk to. The daily glimpses of John's deaf and speechless ghost mocked him as it must have been intended to. He had the whole world of human works available to him but he read sparingly and only when he needed to for work or husbandry. There were files; police, civil service, Mycroft's extensive records, but dead mysteries didn't interest him, not without an audience.

Sherlock dumped the kid in the kitchen, and opened selected tins of food in strict accordance with the dietary plan he'd devised a year and a half before. He ate quickly and without pleasure, the young goat bleating constantly at him and Mrs Hudson coming into existence briefly in the doorway on her way out with empty shopping bags. The weather was reasonable and he needed exercise; he'd walk over to the hospital which meant collecting the rifle from his room.

He opened the door to the sitting room, and stopped dead.

"You have ghosts. How interesting." Jim Moriarty's voice was husky, probably from disuse. He looked tanned and weatherbeaten, dressed in traveller's lightweight linen under a Panama hat and he was sprawled across John's armchair, clearly delighted at Sherlock's complete astonishment.


	5. Ghost of a Chance

There was an empty mug and the lingering scent of coffee in the room. The kettle had been moved onto the left ring of the gas stove. Not a hallucination, this time.

Moriarty came up from the chair to meet Sherlock, extended a hand, sardonically amused. "Sherlock Holmes. Fancy meeting you here." The fingers wrapped tight around Sherlock's felt warm, pliant, real. Shaking Jim Moriarty's hand in hell. Data.

"You're not a ghost." Sherlock let go.

Jim laughed, sharp-edged. "We're all ghosts, Sherlock. You must know that by now. But I'm your sort of ghost, not these sentimental keepsakes. Did you make them yourself?"

"No." Sherlock stepped back, sat down carefully on the sofa. His rifle was lying on the table, loaded. "Do you know what they are?"

"Exactly what they seem. Boring. Odd, though, they didn't give me any ghosts. But then I didn't make the mistakes you made."

"Who are 'they'?" Sherlock's mind was racing as it hadn't done for months. This changed everything.

"Oh, Sherlock, love! What have you been doing since you arrived? Surely not just playing with pets and LSD? Did you meet the angel?"

"Yes."

"Did you kill it?"

"No." Sherlock frowned. "No, I didn't kill it. Was I meant to?"

Jim shrugged. "Probably not, strictly speaking. But it was fun. Feathers everywhere." He curled back into John's chair, rubbing himself like a cat against the cushions, and Sherlock felt a twinge of anger. He'd left that empty for nineteen months, and not so Jim Moriarty could get his scent all over it.

"I'm sure it was." Sherlock needed to get back some control over this conversation. He considered Moriarty carefully, assessing the tan, the sun bleached hairs on his arms, the clothing, the marks of wear and tear, the wristwatch. The feel of the callused hand in his. Jim Moriarty. The worst kind of trouble, the one man who'd beaten him, John's murderer, quite possibly, and Sherlock had never been so glad to see anyone in his life.

"West coast of the USA, I see. How long did it take to get here?"

"Ten days by land, three weeks by sea. I found a rather better boat this time. Well stocked bar and a decent stereo system. Mostly automated, of course, but it was still more virtuous fresh air and exercise than I ever want to experience again. Some bits of Hell are more hellish than others."

"This time? You sailed solo across the Atlantic twice?"

Jim stretched out his legs, sighing. "No internet, no courier service, not even a minion with a fax machine. There is not one single living human being in this universe except us, and our existential status is somewhat dubious. If I wanted information I had to go and get it. And I wanted this information badly enough."

Sherlock had never had so many questions but he intended to be cautious about asking them. Moriarty looked like a man with answers but the detective had very little to bargain with.

Jim was watching him, eyes cool and amused. "Did you jump?"

"Yes." It seemed a lifetime ago.

"I knew that you'd do it. I won."

"You died before I did. Just." Sherlock paused. "Did we die?"

Moriarty turned his face away, closed his eyes. "They really were inspired, Sherlock, Hell's designers. They gave me one person in the entire universe, just one, to play with. I cross continents and oceans for you, and what do I find? A stupid man who stinks of goat and would rather put chemicals in his brain than use it!" His voice had become louder, less stable. Genuinely angry.

"This is our own private Hell, yours and mine, and you're frittering it away. I'll leave you to play with your pets and your drugs. California has a much nicer climate."

"You're bluffing." Sherlock reached out a hand to seize Moriarty's sleeve at the door. "You need me. You've only got half the answers. You know how this happened, what it is, but none of your research has found you a way out of here. That's why you've come to me. You need my help."

Jim narrowed his eyes, calmer, contemplating Sherlock. "I need someone intelligent. I've already given you far more clues than I had. Show me there's something left in the pathetic wreckage of that brain of yours and I'll think about working with you."

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow." Jim pulled away and down the stairs. Sherlock let him go.

That evening Sherlock took up his long unused violin, tuned it carefully, his mind circling around everything Moriarty had said. By the time the other man walked quietly into the room and curled up, feet under him, Sherlock was playing Vivaldi, complex and beautiful. He acknowledged Jim with a look, kept on playing.

There was a long pause when the piece ended. Sherlock had started to put the instrument away by the time that Moriarty spoke.

"I don't know everything."

"No?" Sherlock laid the bow in its worn case.

"No. What I don't know, and it really does bug me a little, is why my hell should have you in it."

Sherlock shrugged. "That's the role of a nemesis, I imagine."

"Too trite. I have given this a great deal of consideration and I cannot imagine why I've been allowed a toy to play with, when I have undoubtedly been very bad indeed.

"Maybe I'm expected to make you unhappy." Sherlock was picking his way carefully through this conversation, trying not to let that show.

"Oh, you've never made me unhappy, Sherlock. Disappointed, frequently, but then I'm used to disappointment. You did it less than the others."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

That pleased Jim, for reasons that Sherlock couldn't immediately fathom. Moriarty uncurled himself, stood up.

"You are the only person in my world. Don't think that doesn't come with obligations attached." His smile was confident. "I'll take John's room. He won't be needing it this side of eternity, after all. Good night."

Sherlock stood in the chaotic living room looking at the empty chair for some time, a flicker of hope getting steadily stronger. Moriarty was here because he thought there was a chance to change the hell that they shared. And Jim wasn't given to wishful thinking. Even if escape was only into the oblivion that real death would bring, it had to be better than this.

He picked up the violin again. First he had to deduce what Jim already knew. The nature of hell.


	6. Then What Remains

Last time Sherlock had visited John's room it had still managed to hold the faint odour of the man. By the early hours of this morning that lingering presence had been banished forever, replaced by the slight acrid aftershave of Moriarty, curled up in the centre of John's mattress with the duvet wrapped tight around him. 

He blinked sleep out of his eyes, as Sherlock held the battery powered lantern high up to illuminate the room. Waking, he looked no more than ordinary, awkward, young, but the fierce, malevolent intelligence in dark brown eyes came back fast. Jim hitched himself up onto the pillows, lips twitched in the familiar half smile.

"Now you know."

Sherlock nodded. 

Moriarty pulled himself to one side of the bed, taking the covers with him, patted the bare sheet beside him. "Come on then. Tell all."

Sherlock didn't move. "Why there?"

"Because," and Jim sounded frighteningly close to sincere, for once, "you know how bitterly cold the world is tonight, sweet. Take a little warmth wherever you can get it."

Sherlock would normally have needed an extremely compelling reason to even consider the idea of getting within arm's length of Jim Moriarty. Tonight, it seemed trivial. Was trivial. Only the truth mattered, tonight.

He kicked off his slippers, swung himself to sit on John's bed, long legs stretched down nearly to the brass rail at the end. Moriarty plucked the lamp out of his fingers, turned it off and the blackness that was hell's London night returned.

Sherlock settled himself against the cold metal at the head. He tipped his head back, eyes open on nothing, spoke evenly.

"California. I thought Hollywood at first. Smoke and mirrors. But this is so far beyond what cinema special effects can do that nothing there could conceivably help.

"But Hollywood isn't where the magic happens any more, is it? You went to Silicon Valley, because you needed to understand the theory behind the most advanced computing systems available. Closed systems, the angel said. Not engineering but computing. Virtual reality. Simulation."

Something touched him and he quashed the automatic startle response. Four fingers, each curled tight around the back of his neck, a thumb pressed, not lightly, against the pulse at the front. The touch was warm and real and in no sense comforting. 

Sherlock closed his eyes, palms flat on the bedsheet, let Moriarty's hand remain, even knowing how his pulse must betray him, because he'd never turned away from a correct line of reasoning in his life and he wouldn't do it here.

"Ghosts, you'd said. You and I.

"VR had been one of my very first thoughts, naturally, but I haven't been idle all these months. I've looked everywhere from the finest detail of a rat's brain and the smudges on Leonardo's cartoons to every single type of tobacco available in London and Mycroft's old expense claims and it's all perfect. Those drugs I synthesised; no-one else should have been able to predict their effects accurately, and yet they worked on my consciousness exactly as predicted.

"So I'd dismissed the VR idea. Given 21st century computing it was flatly impossible. I imagine you confirmed that while you were out there."

"I was already aware of the limits to the capacities of every advanced computer facility in the world. I'm not a dilettante like you. I worked for my living." Moriarty's dig was without heat. Sherlock ignored it, continued;

"You'd thought simulation was important enough to cross the Atlantic for, so I considered it afresh but I came up with the same answer over and over; an accurate simulation of reality on computers as we know them was not possible. Not unlikely; outright impossible. Not to mention the interface problems. You can't just stick electrodes into the brain, wire someone up, get perfect immersion."

It felt so good to talk again. Even about this. Even to this audience. He paused just as he used to do for deliberate effect. 

The hand tightened, and Moriarty rolled, fast. Sherlock found himself with a naked man straddling his thighs, both hands now at his throat, just too tight for comfort. He spoke awkwardly around them without attempting to get free, not ready to turn the uneven position into an outright struggle.

"I don't." But Moriarty knew that. 

"Don't stop talking." the man murmured. Jim's hands slipped upwards, fingers buried in the curls at the back of Sherlock's head, thumbs still against his neck. A hiss in the dark, more impatience. "Go on!"

"Very well. Eventually I decided to ignore everything I knew about computers and consider the problem in terms of pure logic. Two universes, discounting the angel's rock for the moment, identical in virtually every measurable way; physics, chemistry, history, geography, geology, biology. For any given experiment I'd get identical results in both, unless it involved humans or my ghosts.

"Given any two virtually identical objects, what could I deduce about their nature? The most obvious hypothesis would be that they are identical in kind. So not reality and a simulation of it, but two realities. Or two simulations."

Fingers tightened in his hair. "Sherlock, you are beautiful. Killing you was by far the best thing I ever did. Go on."

"In the reality we left consciousness is a brain function. Afterlife is a meaningless concept. Here and there can't both be real." He resisted the temptation to take an unnecessary deep breath for the next part. 

"Which leaves the hypothesis that both hell and the world we came from are equivalent simulations, created by and running on something unknown outside our universe. Improbable in the extreme, but not impossible. And the only explanation that works."

His hands had dropped to rest lightly on Jim's naked thighs. Warm, human, but not made of stuff at all. "A simulation capable of constructing our universe, that can model the huge complexity of the human brain, six billion times over. We're the result of computer code, or something functionally equivalent; you, me, this bed, everyone and everything we've ever known, modelled down to the level of the individual atom. We could be turned off in an instant, or kept immortal. Inserted into any environment. There could be a billion copies of us or one.

"We're ghosts, you and I, but then that's all we have ever been. Am I right, Jim?"

"Oh, yes," Moriarty's voice was low. "My clever, clever boy. Top marks, this time. Fuck." And Sherlock wasn't sure for a moment whether the last word was an instruction or an obscenity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author’s Note** : The usual argument for suggesting that we are in a simulated universe goes something like this: at some point computing power will reach the point at which a simulation will be possible which is indistinguishable from the real world to an observer inside it. Some huge number of these simulations may then be run in which countless trillions of conscious beings will exist. Given that we can’t tell whether we are in the real world or one of these, the chances that we just happen to be the ones in reality are vanishingly small. 
> 
> Of course when angels start messing around with the system it’s much easier to figure out what's going on.


	7. Trial of Hell

There was a mouth against his, wet and forceful, tongue pushing hard against his teeth. Sherlock let it in to see what it would do, trying to interpret the ungentle assault. Moriarty was still sprawled naked across his lap; he could feel the man's erection pressing against the waistband of his own trousers. It was not immediately obvious why.

When he thought he partly understood he brought his own hands up to cup Moriarty's smooth cheeks, pushed his mouth away without violence. He could feel the heat of the man's rapid breathing, could picture his face in the dark. He was aware of his body's own slight arousal response, shut it down without conscious thought. He would need a much better reason than mere physiology to consent to sex with anyone, let alone this most dangerous of men with his thumbs still digging possessively into Sherlock's trachea. Not that there would be anyone else. 

"You weren't sure, until I confirmed it. You thought maybe you'd got it wrong." Thus emotional/adrenaline/sexual reaction.

"You were so ignorant of computers that you thought that key code was real. But your logic is so sexy gorgeous...let's just fuck now, honey." 

"Why? Because you're scared of ghosts?" Sherlock dropped a little disdain into his voice. "I'm the virgin, remember. I don't do sex."

Jim's voice turned colder. "I've lived with this for the past year, lover boy. You haven't even started to consider the real implications. Eternity, Sherlock. Quarter of a human lifetime had me so bored that blowing my brains out was a delightful joke, and I had the entire human race to play with."

His tongue reached Sherlock's nose unerringly in the dark, licked up it slowly, leaving a trail of damp skin. "How long do you plan on staying untouched, lover? A day? A year? A hundred? How about a million years? If anyone could resist me for a million years, I'm sure it would be you. What percentage of eternity is a million years, Sherlock? All your self restraint is going to be meaningless in the end. Give it up now."

The certainty in his voice... Sherlock ignored the tongue, now exploring one eyebrow, in favour of real data.

"You've tried dying. You gave up so soon?" He'd imagined Moriarty more resilient. The other man drew back a little, huffed annoyance through the dark.

"This is someone else's game. Do you imagine I'd let myself be played with if I had a choice?"

"What happens?"

"The rope frays, explosives flood, something breaks my fall, I get distracted, change my mind. Nothing happens."

Something about that was wrong. Out of place. "You're saying they break the simulation's rules?"

Jim laughed, high and edgy. "You don't get it yet, do you, sweetheart? They don't need to break the rules. They just run our lives over and over until they find the one in a million version in which we both happen to survive. Welcome to immortality, Sherlock. Eternal damnation. This is Hell."

It was cold beyond belief, this truth. Sherlock felt far more powerless than he had done on the roof. Moriarty had been an enemy to human scale. This was unbeatable. 

"No" he said, aloud. "This isn't going to happen. I need to think." 

Breath on his cheek, then lips barely brushing his. Fingers massaged high up his jaw, oh so delicate now.

"You do that, pet." Jim murmured. "You don't need your body for that. I'll just borrow it for a bit."

Sherlock grimaced. "Why sex?" This was not what he needed to be concentrating on. Moriarty was being a nuisance.

"You really don't understand? Why don't I just show you?"

"Come on, Jim. Stimulus, arousal. Engagement in a limited range of stereotypical actions designed to stimulate the genitals to orgasm. Release of hormones connected to pair bonding and a general feeling of well being. My goats do it. Those ordinary people that bore you so do it interminably, usually on television. It's useless and distracting and requires no intelligence whatsoever, and yet you now clearly prioritise it over the far more challenging forms of interaction that we've previously engaged in, not to mention the possibility of useful co-operation. Don't show me. Explain."

"You really learned nothing at all from Irene, pet?"

"Only that seduction is merely manipulation. Why would I choose to waste my time this way? Why do you?"

Moriarty laughed. "Listen to yourself, Sherlock. Distraction, manipulation. Power games, and all I need to play is us and the darkness. Still sound like dumb animals to you?

"Why distract me now? My reason is in your interest."

"That's not all that's going on, idiot. You're missing so many tricks here it's laughable. I'm almost tempted to keep you this naive, but getting into your pants happens to be vitally important right now so I'm helping you out. That precious virginity of yours keeps you ignorant. Despising sex stops you understanding how to use it when it's used against you."

And a small part of what She'd done was undoubtedly just that.

Buy why important now? Not just mindless response to the danger, not from Moriarty. Not just to annoy him. Not a lesson. Something about right now, this situation. A test, but why test Sherlock here tonight?

A trial, but not of Sherlock. A trial of Hell. He laughed, genuinely amused despite the night's bleak revelations, uncomfortably aware that Jim Moriarty amused him far too often. "You think it's going to be that good? I'm flattered."

"If I were a religious man I'd be praying for the ride of my life." 

The dawn was just starting to turn the black to greys. Sherlock wished he could see Jim's face, but then the other man would be able to see his. Probably better in the dark.

"You may be overrating it."

That just got a snigger.

"They may not think it important."

"Misjudgement, mistake; either will do. If we have a really good time then they're not infallible. Come on, pet. It's a cast-iron excuse for a little debauchery. Are they going to let you take it?"

Sherlock threw in a warning, before this got too far. "This is my hell, too. You want my help, I suggest you remember my perspective."

"You'll be always on my mind." A swift kiss to his forehead.

The experiment appeared to be valid. The results were undoubtedly important. It required rather more reliance on Jim Moriarty behaving himself than Sherlock was entirely comfortable with but the risk was acceptable, given the significance of the outcome. Also if sex with anyone could be anything other than tedious, this man might manage it. Sherlock decided swiftly.

"Very well. If you can do it, you may."

The weight left him. Seconds later the lantern was turned back on, and he blinked at Jim, now sitting on the other side of the bed with the duvet loosely around his waist. 

"I doubt," Jim said cheerfully, "that fumbling with zips and buttons in the dark is hugely aphrodisiac for you. Also I like to see exactly what I have to work with. So take your clothes off, darling, and we'll start from there."

Sherlock started to unbutton his shirt. "The terms of endearment are not contributing anything to the required mood, by the way."

"I like them." Jim grinned at him, mouth agape. "You've always been my sweetheart, Sherlock. This is a very special moment for me."

"How lovely for you." He shrugged off his shirt, started on his trousers. 

Jim was bouncing slightly on the bed. "Not bad. It creaks a little, but then you know all about that. You'd lie awake listening to him fuck other people overhead, or argue with them, or both, and you'd wonder why on earth he bothered with all that fuss just for the sake of sex. Maybe now you'll find out."

"Not if you insist on talking about John." He pulled his underwear down, sat naked crosslegged on the bed, unembarrassed and unaroused. "Your marksman might have killed him."

Moriarty shook his head. "I play fair, sometimes. If you jumped John would have lived. In a little hell of his own, I imagine, but you can't blame angels for that one. Stand up and turn round slowly."

"Why?" Sherlock didn't move. 

Jim sighed. "Bickering with you, my love, makes me so ecstatic that I'm inclined to consider it sufficient evidence of a cosmic cock-up in its own right, but if this is going to work you are going to have to shut up and do what you're told. Would you like a gag?"

"Not necessary." Clearly there was more to sex than an intention and no clothes. If he didn't let Moriarty take the lead nothing would happen. He stood up, turned, giving the man plenty of time to look at whatever it was that interested him. When he turned back it was to meet Jim's eyes.

"Well?"

"Hush." Jim looked thoughtful. "You don't masturbate."

"No."

"Of course not. Have you had one single sexual feeling in your adult life that you haven't consciously or unconsciously suppressed?"

"No."

"Right. Good. Well, just as soon as you remember how to stop suppressing them we can get on with it." Moriarty said irritably.

"If I notice any," Sherlock snapped back, "I'll bear it in mind."

"No. You respond, every time, but then you close down. I could spend all day on you, get nowhere. This really is Hell." He frowned. "What about the drugs?"

"They're not designed for this." His psychoactives, carefully synthesised for taking on his own. "I might be able to find something appropriate." All London's pharmacies were open, after all. "It doesn't have to be now."

"Yes it does. I need an answer. If they're stopping us- you know what that means."

He did. Sherlock did a quick calculation.

"No more than point five mg. At that level it should be a disinhibitor. Any more and I risk disconnection with reality. And there's been quite enough of that already tonight."


	8. (And Scarlet)

"That hurts."

"I'm surprised that you can tell." John's room. Not John's voice. Sherlock tried focussing, failed.

"It's red," he explained. "No, scarlet." A jagged scarlet line running through the greens and greys churning in his mind. "Pretty. Do it again."

Jagged scarlet lightning. He wanted to explain it to John, but he was alone. Not alone. There was the voice.

"At least you're talking again. What about this?"

Yellow-orange-yellow-red-orange. Yoyro. "What's a yoyro?"

"Tell me about the colours."

He tried. "Orange, blurring to red, back again. Why can't you see?"

"You're hallucinating them. "

Oh. That was plausible. "They change."

"Like this." Electric blue in a sheet over the rest, then gone. "Colour?"

"Blue. Amazing blue."

"I'm screwing a talking kaleidoscope. Staying good is really killing me right now, pet." Flickers of yellow orange yellow. "I need to bring you back to earth a little. Do please let me know when it hurts."

Scarlet. Orange red scarlet. Yellow orange red orange scarlet. Scarlet. Blue, blue again. Crimson. Scarlet.

Pain. A long way away, happening to someone else. It flickered and rose with the redness, stronger, closer, until there was scarlet-pain and blue-arousal and yellow-orange-pressure all chasing each other around.

"Your pulse is up. Hurt?" 

Scarlet. "Yes". But he didn't know how or where.

"Good." 

Blue. Orange. Blue. Crimson. Scarlet. He was starting to feel his body again, a haze of sensation with red and blue sharp in different places, a haze of orange yellow green everywhere else. 

Focus. Try to focus. Succeed, in part. Scarlet pain in the back of his neck. He was lying on his side. The blue was in his genitals. Something happened to them and the whole world spiked blue again, losing his concentration. He got it back with difficulty. There was orange, a great deal of orange, blurred to red, back again. Something was happening, down past the base of his spine. Something peculiar.

It blurred to red and blue simultaneously and he gasped.

"That's better." This time the voice set off alarm bells but he couldn't tell his limbs how to move and he forgot again.

"Blue," he demanded because he knew that was good.

"This?" Blue blue blue, the world was electric blue (and scarlet) and blue. It faded back to orange and green (and scarlet). 

"More." His body had remembered how to move all by itself. His hips twitched in search of the blue and there was instantly red, shooting up his back, inside his body, vanishing again.

"Hold still, pet. That's very distracting."

He badly needed to defecate. No. A different sensation. Something intrusive. Sensations finally clarified; he was lying on his side with his knees halfway to his chest. Teeth and tongue explored the back of his bitten neck, flickering crimson. A hand brushed his erect penis, sending electric blue waves over him with every touch. And Jim Moriarty rocked his solid erection just a little back and forth inside Sherlock's body, orange and red and blue as he moved.

"Back with me, lover?"

"Yes."

"Excellent. I'm going to make this fast before your bloody awkward subconscious wakes up and tries another shut-down. Close your eyes, darling, and enjoy the ride."

It was a flickering mass of shifting colours at first, but the electric blue and the scarlet soon predominated. It all got harder and faster and he could hear himself gasping, Moriarty's breaths fast and uneven. Blue, everything was blue and it built to orgasm just as he knew it must, nothing like he imagined it would feel. The waves afterwards were lighter blue, rolling across the bed, the crimson sharp where the other man pulled away then rapidly fading.

"They didn't stop us." He'd just remembered the justification. Blue. What John had never told him. Sex was blue (and scarlet) and electric blue.

"I love you too, honey. No, they didn't." Jim sounded thoroughly satisfied. The duvet was draped over Sherlock's shoulders. "Go to sleep."

 

Sherlock woke thirsty. Dehydration. Drug use. There would be water on the table by the bedside, but this wasn't his bed and there wasn't. He sat up, registering soreness, remembering. Electric blue, and scarlet. Where was Moriarty now?

Downstairs, back in John's chair, wrapped in Sherlock's dressing gown, watching him walk naked through the sitting room and into his bedroom in search of clothes. Sherlock's neck seemed to have been chewed on at length; he found his softest collar. He'd set the immersion heater on later for hot water, get properly clean. Not of primary importance, unlike coffee. There had been the smell of coffee from the kitchen.

Jim had a mug in each hand as Sherlock walked back into the room. 

"I've missed milk. Black coffee is so uncivilised."

"You could have kept goats, too."

"Me? I don't think so." He passed one over. "I specialised in people. They are stupider."

"Bit unfortunate for you, that. Being here." Sherlock took a sip, curled up on the couch without wincing.

"You enjoyed that."

Sherlock considered briefly. Compared yesterday with all the days that had gone before. Electric blue. "Enough for the point to be established. You?"

"Way more than necessary." That was an utterly self-satisfied grin. "Genuine twenty four carat fun. Far more than any self respecting hell ought to permit."

Sherlock nodded. "What about other occasions? Any evidence of interference?"

"No. The odds only skew when it's my life on the line. You?"

"The same. So, they set up the initial parameters and then they leave us completely alone, except that we always survive. Both of us."

The two men watched each other, drank their coffee. Eventually Sherlock spoke again.

"Is infinite computing power possible?"

"No." Jim's mouth twitched in a smile. "You think there might be limits?"

"What if we make our survival more and more difficult? Increase the number of iterations needed?"

"Then what?"

"If there's not enough processing to keep us alive? We die, I imagine."

Moriarty had stopped smiling. "You do know that all the other versions of you die anyway, don't you? You just don't remember them."

"Death is acceptable. I've done it before."

Moriarty's grin was happy. "It will take a great deal of planning. Unsurvivable events are close to impossible. But then I've always really wanted to destroy the world."


	9. Staying Alive

It had been months since Sherlock had seen the sun. Smoke from the fires raging around London blocked out the sunlight, made the city look something like it must have done in the old peasoupers. The windows of 221B were shut tight but the smoke was everywhere, and Sherlock stopped halfway up the stairs to cough the worst out of his lungs. Below him the door latch clicked; John, leaving.

Life was increasingly unpleasant in the city, but further out was no better. Blights had killed the crops, carefully resurrected diseases had done for most of the surviving wild animals. The goats were long since gone, the lab animals abandoned. Sherlock was alone again with his oblivious ghosts. Jim had left nine months before with the most complex task ahead of him. They'd designed it so that he would stay as safe as possible, to minimise the simulation's interference, but nothing was straightforward any more.

The geiger counter clattered constantly now in Sherlock's pocket, evidence that at least some of Moriarty's work had succeeded. All being well, there should by now be a ring of lethal radiation across northern France, the Netherlands, and a band of English towns around a hundred miles from London. 

Sherlock's tasks had been more parochial; destroying as much of outer London with its depots and supermarkets that he could. He'd become an experienced arsonist; many of the fires he'd set now covered miles of the suburbs, had been out of control for weeks. The whole of the South Bank was alight; he'd watched the billowing flames and smoke making the water of the Thames swirl red and orange and grey. Normally he would have feared the winds blowing the surrounding fires closer to Baker Street but his infernal luck was holding still.

He opened the door at the top of the stairs to the smell of coffee and found himself smiling. He hadn't thought that they'd meet again, before the end. 

"Still no milk." Moriarty was propped up on the kitchen worktop, pouring the coffee with a badly shaking hand. He looked rough. Blistered pale skin, his previously glossy dark hair patchy and dull, and painfully gaunt. Radiation sickness. Hell wasn't doing a good job of keeping Jim Moriarty alive any more.

"That's the last of the coffee. Don't spill it." The last of most things. Sherlock had been destroying his supplies for weeks now, preparing to starve. Not that he would have been eating much anyway, thanks to the combination of the smoke and the nausea that was the first sign of his own overexposure to the drifting radiation. 

He took both coffees from Jim, helped the man through to collapse on the sofa. "Did you get them all?"

"Oxford didn't go off. Don't think it matters." Jim coughed weakly. "Missed me, pet?" His eyes were as sharp as ever. 

"I thought I'd miss seeing you die. I was sorry about that." 

"Glad to oblige. Shall we check that they're still not paying attention?"

The familiar invitation. Sherlock had never really taken to sex; it involved too much ceding of control, and Jim had taken savage advantage of that a couple of times, while his one attempt to return the gesture had been turned against him with casual ease. But in the four years of planning and preparations that it had taken to get this far he'd been bored enough to let Jim play a handful of times.

"You don't look capable."

"Take your clothes off for me, lover, and we'll find out."

Jim reached out to a long white thigh, shaking fingers drifting over Sherlock's penis, and Sherlock felt the faintest stirrings of arousal. Jim must have felt it too because he smiled. "Electric blue", he murmured, let his hand drop and was silent. Fallen asleep, black coffee untouched. 

After that Sherlock couldn't rouse him. For some days he stayed in the flat, eating nothing, waiting for Moriarty to die, but the man stayed comatose. Sherlock imagined a million million simulations, and always one in which Jim lived for another hour, another day. 

In the end he took matters into his own hands. He'd long since scattered explosives around the house, enough that a single pile would blow the place sky high. Now he tried to set the fires, fighting the simulation's best efforts; the freak storm with the lightning that took the flat's roof off, let the rainstorm in to soak everything. Sherlock kept going for hours, finally managed to keep a small flame alight, watched it start to spread underneath the floorboards. Then he took the gun from the kitchen drawer and returned to the man on the sofa.

For a moment he was tempted to say something triumphal. Jim had threatened his friends, after all, had caused his death, and now Sherlock was killing him. But that had been a world in which Moriarty had died on the rooftop, or should have done. This was Hell and no-one deserved it, not him, not even Jim Moriarty. Splinter, he told the world, into a million more. Multiply the billions and billions of versions that were needed to produce just one where Jim lives. Break. The gun was loaded, the mechanism tested and perfect; he put the barrel to Moriarty's temple and fired. 

 

There were gates, and mist, and an anatomically impossible angel. Sherlock stretched out a hand, looked closely at the unmarked nails, the healthy glow to his skin, and smiled.

"You broke Hell." The angel sounded bemused.

"Send me to Heaven and I'll do the same. I know what it takes, now."

Flutter of wings, half spread then back again. "You have to go somewhere. I can't just erase you."

"Why not?"

"No-one can be lost. Not even you."

Sherlock was about to insist on oblivion when a better idea presented itself. "Send me back, then."

"To reality?" The angel shook his head. "I can't. You're dead. That's what reality is all about. The rules can't be broken, there."

"I'm dead in one version. There must be more." A plan was coalescing.

"There's only ever one. Otherwise judgement would be impossible."

"But you could change the one there is. Rerun it. Start from the lab, when I talk to Molly." It was clear in his head now, what he had to do.

"That's technically cheating."

"Tough. You can do it. Otherwise I'm going to break things again."

The angel nodded reluctantly. " I can do it. But you'll end up back here eventually. Everyone does."

"Anything could happen by then. Send me back."

 

There was something that Sherlock couldn't quite remember. It nagged at him all through the careful planning of his fake suicide, but he couldn't take time off to hunt for it. Jim Moriarty was playing a vicious game with him and Moriarty was winning.

A flash of deja vu, on the rooftop; the sense, without reason, that he'd done this before. They sparred like lovers and the end rolled forward inevitably, twisting and turning but always closer to the edge. Angels, and hell. They were talking about angels? Sherlock had to keep his people alive, keep himself alive; he didn't have time for theological indulgences. So he put it to the back of his mind and there it stayed.

Until Jim Moriarty looked at him for one last time with those startlingly deep brown eyes and murmured "Well, good luck with that," As he pulled the gun from its holster his lips were still moving, silent, and Sherlock's brain- too slow!- translated "electric blue", just as the body fell backwards and away.

Sherlock looked down at Jim Moriarty, eyes open and vacant, blood pooling on the concrete. Still bleeding? He made no attempt to be sure. Instead he walked to the rooftop edge, pulling out his phone, readied himself to fall one last time, and live.

The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Note:** I am most obliged to Iain M. Banks' _Surface Detail_ for the notion of simulated hells and to several New Scientist articles for discussions of our reality as a simulation. Also to my son who helped me figure out how immortality had to work. The aggregation of these various ideas is all mine :-)
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has left comments. I will now reply!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] More Things in Heaven and Earth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/638623) by [Unsentimentalf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf)




End file.
